Critical Essay by Paul Rosefeldt

SOURCE: “Trapped in the Father's Dying World: Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart and Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters,” in The Absent Father in Modern Drama, Peter Lang, 1995, pp. 75-82.

In the following essay, Rosefeldt links Henley's Crimes of the Heart to the Chekhovian tradition, in particular to the drama The Three Sisters.

Another play that focuses on the daughter's relationship to an absent father is Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart.Crimes of the Heart is not a play about the daughter's withdrawal into the world of the father, but it is a play in which an absent father figure dominates the lives of three women. Both 'night, Mother and Crimes of the Heart started at the Actors' Theatre in Louisville, played Off-Broadway, won a Pulitzer Prize, and had successful Broadway runs. Both plays made...